New York, U.S.A. — President Barack Obama announced a renewed commitment by the U.S. government to fight human trafficking through the Partnership for Freedom: Innovation Awards to Stop Human Trafficking, a public-private initiative led by Humanity United, the Department of Justice and other federal agencies, with support from the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women initiative. The Partnership for freedom will fund innovative solutions to improve care for survivors of human trafficking and modern-day slavery.

“Trafficking survivors all too often face obstacles in accessing the comprehensive services they need to rebuild their lives,” Humanity United CEO Randy Newcomb said. “While federally-funded efforts to assist trafficking survivors have laid a strong foundation, there is still so much to be done. We can and must do better to find evidence-based models to effectively support survivors, and this initiative is a step in that direction.”

Humanity United, a foundation established by philanthropists Pierre and Pam Omidyar that is dedicated to building peace and advancing human freedom, is joining together with the federal government and with founding support from the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women initiative to establish a $6 million challenge award.

The challenge will call upon local communities to develop collaborative and comprehensive solutions to human trafficking survivor care that can be evaluated and expanded nationally and internationally through federal policies and programs. ”We are honored to support the public-private Partnership for Freedom,” said Dina Habib Powell, president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation. “By bringing together the corporate, governmental and nonprofit sectors to fund and scale practical solutions, we believe this initiative can have a real impact in the lives of trafficking survivors.”

Purpose of the commitment

Over the next few months, Humanity United will convene leading researchers, stakeholders, community organizations and government officials to help design and administer the award. The initial round of the award, to launch in 2013, will support the most innovative approaches in three areas:

• sustainable housing and shelter solutions for all types of trafficking survivors
• comprehensive care and case management for survivors who are minors
• law enforcement engagement with survivors

The federal government, along with private donors such as the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women initiative, will commit financial resources and technical expertise to support the award, and will offer evaluation services to determine which approaches are proven to work. The goal will be to identify promising ideas and solutions at the local and community level that can later be nationally scaled and internationally replicated.

The Partnership for Freedom will consist of three levels of support aimed at innovation, evaluation and scale:

• Community Conversation Grants will be awarded to encourage dialogue and activate local coordination.
• Challenge Grants will be awarded to innovative community-level initiatives with the most promise of being scaled.
• Scale will be achieved by pairing challenge grant winners with evaluators to identify which innovations can be expanded nationally and internationally through federal policies, practices and funding.

Community Conversation Grants

Recognizing that not all communities have existing expertise to design these innovations, Community Conversation Grants will enable a series of local stakeholder convenings to explore and establish a coordinated response to meet the needs of trafficking victims in communities around the country.

Challenge Grants

Challenge Grants will support solutions that address major challenges to survivor assistance. Paired with third-party evaluations, Challenge Grant recipients will help to build the body of knowledge for what works for survivors.

In addition to the Community Conversation Grants and Challenge Grants, the Partnership for Freedom will pair grant winners with academic researchers and program evaluators to build an evidence base of the most effective approaches. These projects will be coordinated with existing federal government efforts in order to fill key gaps in knowledge and practice, and to maximize the potential for these approaches to inform future policies and programs.

To ensure widespread commitment to this effort, an advisory board composed of a variety of stakeholders including prominent leaders in the field, advocates, senior law enforcement officials and survivors will be established to help inform the award criteria and selection process, and determine the award parameters.

Background of the proposal

Human trafficking has been identified as the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that human trafficking generates $32 billion annually. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), at any given moment more than 20 million people are trapped in slave-like conditions around the world. While Humanity United and many others continue to work on the root causes of this global phenomenon, this initiative will address much-needed efforts to help those who are survivors of human trafficking.

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Kyiv, Ukraine – Ukraine will be the only emerging market in the top ten best performing countries at the upcoming 2012 Summer Olympics in London, according to the study compiled by American bank Goldman Sachs. The authors of the research The Olympics and Economics 2012 expect Ukrainian athletes to win 9 gold medals (and 27 total) at the high profile sports event.

Explaining the methodic used to produce The Olympics and Economics 2012, the author states: “Ultimately, it appears that gold does go where growth and the overall growth environment are best.” The report quotes Tim Hollingsworth, the Chief Executive of the British Paralympic Association: “When you create a world class environment you are far more likely to create world class athletes.”

The indicator used by Goldman Sachs experts to assess the probability of a country winning a certain amount of medals was the Growth Environment Score. The analysts used income, as well as political conditions, macroeconomic stability, macroeconomic conditions, human capital, technology and the microeconomic environment as reference points.

Ukraine took the tenth position in the Goldman Sachs rating with other countries in the top ten being the USA, China, the UK, Russia, Australia, France, Germany, South Korea, and Italy. In 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing Ukraine scored 11th position on the medal table. Ukrainian athletes won 7 gold medals, 5 silver, and 15 bronze then.

Interestingly, the authors of The Olympics and Economics 2012 singled out the sports, most affected by the economic variables. They are cycling, judo, rowing, and swimming. Though Ukrainian judoka Roman Gontiuk and cycler Lesya Kalitovska did win bronze in Beijing, Ukraine won gold in shooting, archery, fencing, athletics, canoeing, and boxing.

The Games of the XXX Olympiad will host more than 10,000 athletes representing 204 nations. Ukrainian 2012 Olympic team features 245 athletes. The 2008 Olympic champions Artur Ayvazyan (shooting), Natalya Dobrynska (athletics), Olga Harlan (fencing), Vasyl Lomachenko (boxing), Inna Osypenko-Radomska (canoeing), and Viktor Ruban (archery) will perform in London.

Ukraine doesn’t just aim to rank high in the competition, the country plans to place 2022 Winter Olympics hosting bid in 2014, according to Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Borys Kolesnikov.

The full text of the Goldman Sachs report can be found here.

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A little over a week ago, Greg Smith, an executive director at Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s largest investment banking and securities firm, resigned from his position after publishing a letter in the New York Times Opinions section.

The letter, entitled “Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs,” details Smith’s observations of the current state of the company.

Smith, who joined Goldman fresh out of college and has worked at the firm for twelve years since, describes the main problem as the culture of the company, that is, “the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money.”

He outlines three quick ways to rise to the top in the company, two of which involve tricking the client into making moves that will benefit Goldman the most, with no concern for how they will—if at all—profit the client.  Using Goldman jargon, these are executing on the firm’s “axes,” which consists of having someone invest in stocks that Goldman is trying to get rid of. “Hunt Elephants” is another code, for getting clients to make a trade that will bring in the biggest profit for Goldman.

The third secret is to get lucky and find yourself dealing with and trading gas. Keeping in line with this blatant disregard for clients, many employees refer to their own clients as “muppets.”  Although Smith said he did not know of any illegal activities happening at the company, he lamented the eroding moral fiber of the company, stating, “I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.”

Although Smith is not the only Wall Street banker to recently resign, he is the most high profile one, and the only one to leave in such a spectacular and outspoken manner.  Goldman’s stock has not gone up or down much since his resignation, making many believe the situation would blow over and be forgotten.

Others, however, believe that these insiders fail to think about the long term effects.  Matt Taibbi, the journalist who christened Goldman a “Vampire Squid,” thinks this marks the beginning of something bigger than any of the movements currently in the United States—and that includes Occupy Wall Street.  Taibbi optimistically writes, “this incident may turn Goldman into such a pariah that the best young bankers won’t want to work there anymore.”

At this point Goldman’s future is unclear, but there is no denying need for reform within Wall Street.  And with Smith’s explosive words, it may well start there.

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An executive at Goldman Sachs left the firm today with a bang, penning a New York Times op-ed accusing the company of increasingly putting profits ahead of clients. Greg Smith started as an intern 12 years ago and last headed a derivatives department. Not surprisingly, Goldman quickly and strongly disagreed with his take.

There have obviously been plenty of unflattering headlines about Goldman in the past few years. We decided to look at just one aspect of their record: SEC charges levied against Goldman and its employees over the past decade.

April 2003: SEC charges Goldman Sachs over conflicts of interest among its research analysts. The company eventually settled for $110 million in fines and disgorgements.

November 2003: Former Goldman economist John Youngdahl pleads guilty to insider trading. The firm had to pay the SEC $4.2 million over profits it gained from the illegal dealings.

July 2004: Goldman settles with the SEC for $10 million over charges it improperly promoted a stock sale involving PetroChina.

January 2005: Goldman settles with the SEC for $40 million over charges that it violated securities law in promoting initial public offerings.

April 2006: Two former Goldman employees are charged with running an international insider-trading ring while they were at the firm. Eugene Plotkin and David Pajcin, both in their 20s, paid off insiders at other firms and stole early copies of Business Week to get an edge. They also tried (unsuccessfully) to use strippers to get information. Both eventually served jail time.

March 2007: A Goldman subsidiary, Goldman Execution and Clearing, settles with the SEC for $2 million over allegations that faulty oversight that allowed customers to make illegal trades.

March 2009: Goldman Execution and Clearing settles with the SEC for $1.2 million over improper proprietary trading by employees.

July 2009: The SEC charges a former Goldman Sachs trader Anthony Perez and his brother with insider trading based on information Anthony Perez obtained through his job at Goldman Sachs. He was fined $25,000 and his brother more than $150,000.

May 2010: The SEC hits Goldman Execution and Clearing with a $225,000 fine for violating a rule aimed at regulating short selling.

July 2010: Goldman settles with the SEC for $553 million over allegations that it misled investors about the collateralized debt obligation ABACUS 2007-AC1 by not disclosing the involvement of a hedge fund in its creation, or the fact that the hedge fund stood to benefit if the CDO failed. Goldman executive Fabrice Tourre was also charged.

March 2011: The SEC charges Goldman board member Rajat Gupta with insider trading. Gupta allegedly passed on information he learned as a board member to the hedge fund Galleon Group. In October, 2011, he was arrested and hit with criminal charges by the FBI. The case is pending.

September 2011: The SEC charges a Goldman employee, Spencer Midlin, and his father for insider trading based on information Spencer Midlin gained from his position at Goldman Sachs. The two men were ordered to pay $92,000.

February 2012: Goldman Sachs receives notice from the SEC that the agency may bring charges related to mortgage backed-securities.

by Cora Currier ProPublica, March 14, 2012, 3:20 p.m.

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According to The Wall Street Journal, the Securities and Exchange Commission has warned a top banker that it may bring civil charges against him for his role in creating a risky collateralized debt obligation, or CDO, that exploded spectacularly as the housing market crashed. It’s the first public evidence that the SEC is considering charges against a top banking executive involved in CDOs, which fueled the financial crisis.

The CDO, from the end days of the boom in 2007, was one of dozens that had been created with the help of the hedge fund Magnetar. As Propublica reported with This American Life and NPR, Magnetar often pushed for riskier assets to be included in CDOs, and placed bets against many of the same investments so that it would profit if those risky assets went sour. (Magnetar has never been charged with any wrongdoing, and has always maintained that it did not have a strategy to bet against the housing market.)

Alexander Rekeda, the banker warned by the SEC, helped create a $1.6 billion CDO called Delphinus CDO 2007-1 for the Japanese bank Mizuho. Investigators allege that investors were not told Magnetar stood to profit if the investments failed. (Here’s the pitchbook for Delphinus.)

In a related matter, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, an independent Wall Street watchdog, has made a preliminary recommendation that Rekeda be disciplined for “alleged misrepresentations in the sale of” another type of security — we have the details here.

Delphinus is not the first deal involving Mizuho and Rekeda that the SEC has looked into. As The Journal reported last year, the agency has been investigating a CDO called Tigris that Magnetar created with Mizuho. That CDO was a collection of the riskiest bits of other CDOs — as we described it, they were “bundling up the dregs of a CDO,” a “rare, if not unprecedented” strategy. The Tigris deal has not yet resulted in charges.

We’ve reached out to Rekeda, who no longer works at Mizuho, but have yet to hear back. A Mizuho spokesman told The Wall Street Journal that it “has been asked by the SEC to provide related documents and information, and it’s currently dealing with it.” (We also have reached out to Mizuho.)

The warning sent to Rekeda, called a Wells notice, says that the SEC has made a “preliminary determination … to recommend charges based on alleged misrepresentations in connection with the structuring of a CDO.”

As we noted last fall, the SEC has also warned the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s that it also may face civil charges in connection with the Delphinus CDO. Standard & Poor’s abruptly downgraded Delphinus just a few months after the security was issued and received a top rating.

Other banks have been charged by the SEC and settled allegations involving CDOs. In 2010, Goldman Sachs settled with the SEC for more than $500 million. In June, J.P. Morgan agreed to pay $153 million, and in October, Citigroup reached a $285 million settlement.

by Cora Currier, ProPublica, Feb. 21, 2012, 1:49 p.m.

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With the failure of the Obama administration to extend its fiscal policy and redeem the American economical illness, people have now fervently placed their hopes in the lap of the Federal Reserve Bank. The American economy is currently going through a rough phase riddles with unfortunate events that has infused pessimism in the system.

Americans are believed to be as pessimistic about the U.S economy as they were during the Great Depression; this shows in key readings of the consumer confidence data. In august the consumer confidence index plunged to its lowest level since April 2009. Consumer confidence index is the degree of optimism consumers have about the overall state of the economy.

It generally indicates the financial situation of the people and their confidence about their future earnings. In a situation like this where rising unemployment and mild lob losses on a constant basis lowers the probability of stability in future income, consumers eventually lose buoyancy and start reducing their spendings.

The consumer confidence index, also sometimes referred to as the expectation index, that dropped 23 point from 74.9 to 51.9 in July. The month of August saw the steepest fall since the heydays of the early recession in 2007.

Jobs in crisis

The darkening outlook of US economy is due to the debt ceiling debates, falling employment, irregular stocks and the downgrade by S&P. With spending cuts and the gloomy jobs outlook, the chances of a sooner-than-expected recovery remains a distant dream.

In a top job-killing list, prepared by CNN Money, Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street giant, took second place; Goldman recently axed 1000 jobs as a part of their cost-cutting effort. Technology giant Cisco Systems also announced a cut of 6500 employees. Top defense supplier to pentagon, The Lockheed Martin said it has laid off 6500 employees and counting.

Research in Motion, maker of Blackberry, also slashed 2000 employees or nearly 10 percent of its workforce. Once the leader in North America Smartphone market, the company finds that sales are waning since Apple launched its new iPhone. With fiscal alternatives drying up there has been a diversion of attention towards the Federal Reserve (FED).

At the two-day FED annual forum at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Bernanke did not give any hints about another round of economic stimulus, but said that the central bank would do all to help boost recovery. Jesse Cole, head of Merlin Institutional group, said “Bernanke really indicated that the central bank has a lot more tools and weapons at its disposal to stimulate the economy.”

Hopes are sky high since the FED chief used his Jackson Hole speech last year to lay the groundwork for a second round of bond purchases. Earlier in December 2008, the FED chief expanded the meeting for two days and lowered the benchmark interest rate to near zero from 1%

Roller-coaster ride

Recent budget outlooks from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provided further proof that the U.S. should be serious about dealing with debt. CBO wants to make about about striking a balance in the efforts to tamp down the debt burden and tanking economic growth.

Not surprisingly, Bernanke echoed a similar voice when he said policymaker should be more careful with current economic recovery and fiscal headwinds that may come up in time. The macro economic situation is difficult with the current high unemployment rates, the high gasoline prices,the  debt mountain, and shrinking alternatives.

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